Feel Like Complaining

Last month I finally got to meet my new doctor at Group Health. I like her a lot and come to find out she used to work at the clinic I came from. Maybe I even saw her once there and subconsciously might have remembered her name so that's why I chose her. I've been checked from head to toe and seem to be in good shape. She put me on Lexapro for depression but it's too soon to feel if it's doing anything. The first couple of weeks were pretty bad with the side effects and I thought about giving up. But they are gone now so I'll hang in there for another month or two to see how it goes. My friend MaryLou has been out of town since Christmas. First she went to Arizona for a long vacation but was abruptly forced to head back to Washington when her son became gravely ill and almost died. He first contracted the type A flu virus which lead to double pneumonia and then an almost always fatal lung disease. My own Aunt died of it about 18 years ago. He was put on life suppo...

If you recall a few years ago I had found a great website to print your own blog, if you are so inclined (or egotistic like me). At that time I was only in three years but now since I've been at it for six , I thought I had better really do it. Blog2Print offers many color choices in hard/soft covers, and you can choose a picture for the front and back cover or they will just grab the first one you ever used. I chose my own, as well as having a contents page and adding comments. I used Google Chrome to make mine and it doesn't have a lot of the choices offered, so next time around I will use IE to see the difference. I only had the first year of my blog printed in case it looked like crap; then I would have been out about 120 bucks for something that I hated. I had a 15% off coupon for first time order so it ran me about 35 bucks. If I do a year at a time, they will cost about the same and it's totally worth it for a nice keepsake to keep me amused in my old age. It ...

After I wrote about working at the Italian restaurant I got to thinking about all of the people who were my customers. With 8 years of being in the same place, there were many regulars. Some of the most memorable are: 1. John; that's his name, not what he was. He was an older fella that lived upstairs in the apartments. When I first started there were two waitresses and she was the only one allowed to wait on him, even if working the counter was in my station. He was very shy and didn't like change. But when she left, he didn't have a choice. He wasn't into chit chat, just give him his soup and let him go on his way. But he was a good tipper, $100.00 on Christmas. Once year, he let me pick a Coach bag out of a catalog. I took the book home and told my husband that I would never pay that much for a purse and picked the cheapest I could find ($200.00). I never used it much though because it was so darn heavy, even empty. After I had left the restaurant I would send him ...

Several months ago I was watching Dr. Oz and he was talking about the health benefits of drinking Kefir. Kefir is a fermented drink made with kefir 'grains' (a yeast/bacterial fermentation starter) and has its origins in the north Caucasus Mountains around 3,000 BC. If you like plain yogurt, sour cream, or even buttermilk you would like Kefir. If not, it's about as gross as they are. But it's good for you, helping restore your gut back to a healthy condition. I really didn't want it for us though. I was thinking more of our dog Nellie who has suffered from Colitis for several years. I did continuing research and found a great story about a dog that was saved by Kefir for stomach problems worse than Nellie. I bought 6 quarts of the stuff from the store. It's damn expensive, running about 5 bucks a quart. The good thing is that she loves it. She has always liked sour cream so she took to it easily. I pour it in a little bowl twice a day and she even looks for ...

The Winter quarter at Eastern had only finished the first full week. We took the kid back Sunday afternoon and her roommate was there watching Netflix movies but we didn't go up. K then left the room about 5:30 pm. The next morning the kid thought it was strange that her roommate hadn't come home, but then she checked her messages. Late Sunday night she had received a message from her roommate's twin sister after she had already turned her phone off, who said that her sister tried to kill herself that night. Apparently she drove herself to a service station in the small college town, slit her wrists and took 30 Benadryl. Someone had found her and called 911. Later on Monday, another message arrived from K herself saying that she would be spending a few nights in the hospital then going into treatment. Our daughter knew that in the past she had eating disorder issues, and had recently broken up with a girlfriend. Her parents were also very overprotective of her, especial...